Friday, June 2, 1978

Bruce Springsteen Darkness on the Edge of Town released

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen

Released: June 2, 1978

Peak: 5 US, 16 UK, 7 CN, 9 AU

Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.1 UK, 5.5 world (includes US and UK)

Genre: classic rock

Tracks:

Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts.

Badlands [4:04] (8/19/78, 42 US, 52 CB, 47 HR, 6 CL, 44 CN)
Adam Raised a Cain [4:34] (42 CL)
Something in the Night [5:14]
Candy’s Room [5:14] (11 CL)
Racing in the Streets [6:54] (11 CL)
The Promised Land [4:29] (10/78, 31 CL)
Factory [2:19]
Streets of Fire [4:03]
Prove It All Night [4:01] (5/23/78, 33 US, 53 CB, 46 HR, 7 CL, 57 CN, 90 AU)
Darkness on the Edge of Town [4:29] (17 CL)

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen.

Total Running Time: 42:55

The Players:

Bruce Springsteen (vocals, guitar, harmonica, producer)
Roy Bittan (piano, backing vocals)
Clarence Clemons (saxophone, backing vocals)
Danny Federici (Hammond organ, glockenspiel)
Garry Tallent (bass)
Steven Van Zandt (rhythm guitar, backing vocals, production assistance)
Max Weinberg (drums)

Rating:

4.413 out of 5.00 (average of 26 ratings)

Quotable: “Material that mined [Springsteen’s] blue-collar roots with a vitality he never topped.” – Blender Magazine

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album:

“Coming three years and one extended court battle after” ^WR “the grandiose Born to Run (1975) [which] proved Springsteen was far more than just another New Dylan,” ^BL “Darkness on the Edge of Town was highly anticipated.” ^WR

“Some attributed the album’s embattled tone to Bruce Springsteen’s legal troubles, but it carried on from Born to Run, in which Springsteen had first begun to view his colorful cast of characters as ‘losers.’ On Darkness, he began to see them as the working class” ^WR and he subsequently “crafted material that mined his blue-collar roots with a vitality he never topped.” ^BL “His characters, some of whom he inhabited and sang for in the first person, had little and were in danger of losing even that. Their only hope for redemption lay in working harder, and their only escape lay in driving.” ^WR

“Springsteen presented these hard truths in hard rock settings, the tracks paced by powerful drumming and searing guitar solos. Though not as heavily produced as Born to Run, Darkness was given a full-bodied sound; Springsteen’s stories were becoming less heroic, but his musical style remained grand – the sound, and the conviction in his singing, added weight to songs like Racing in the Street and the title track, transforming the pathetic into the tragic. But despite the rock & roll fervor, Darkness was no easy listen, and it served notice that Springsteen was already willing to risk his popularity for his principles.” ^WR